Never easy – even if one follows the shorter, unpublished version found at the Paul Sacher Library in Basel – it’s a work that embodies the spirit of Berio’s music for sure. For example, a great interpretive opportunity is imbuing a sense of playfulness during the moments of repetitive, second-timed whole/half step passages. In knowing Berio’s early influences, one can interpret these repetitive figures as possessing a hint of the “Theater of the Absurd.” Possibly, the randomness that marks the piece is also a reflection of Berio’s previous experience and use of the “Open Form” as espoused by Umberto Ecco. There are “jumping in” points in the Sequenza that one can use interpretively as guideposts for elements of form, ideas, thoughts and clichés. There are subtle items – pause markings, rest durations etc. - that help delineate the form. By knowing which writers, painters, musicians Berio admired and followed during his formative years as a composer, a guitarist can through careful study achieve an interdisciplinary approach, which makes for the well-rounded artist. But the whole work tests musical memory, as the guitarist would be well suited to make the connections between moments that come before and those that are to follow. It is interesting to note, that a few years after composing the guitar Sequenza, that Berio re-edited the Sequenza I for Flute – it seems that Berio was frustrated with the interpretations of flutists playing from the earlier 1958 Edition, which used more aleatoric notation. And that the guitar Sequenza is rhythmically precise in its notation, perhaps this work may have influenced his reasoning in revising the flute Sequenza.

Mode Records is one of my favorite music labels, how did you start working with them? Will you record again with Mode?

I certainly would like to record more for them. There is a possibility that Brian Brandt will publish the Boulez Le Marteau sans Maître I recently recorded with conductor Steven Schick, percussion group red fish blue fish and soprano Stephanie Aston. Time will tell.

What does improvisation mean for your music research? Do you think it’s possible to talk about improvisation for classical music or we have to turn to other repertories like jazz, contemporary music, etc.?

Recently, I had an improvisation ensemble course during the spring ten-week quarter of the academic year at U.C. San Diego, which is a very improvisation-rich institution. There is much to be said for other styles/directions, i.e. “other repertories” one can choose, the models, the accumulation of “solo palettes,” the use of a conductor as in “sound painting” á la John Zorn’s Cobra, et al. However for me, participating in an improvisation is far better than being in an audience, unless it is really astounding. The people at U.C. San Diego are striving to be excellent in this realm, but I am not one of them.

In 1968 Derek Bailey asked to Steve Lacy to define in 15 seconds the difference between improvisation and composition, the answer was “In 15 the difference between improvisation and composition is that in composition you have all the time to decide what you say in 15 seconds, while in improvisation you have only 15 seconds” .. Was the Lacy’s answer a little too much ironic or is it a true one?

Well the question I have to ask the improviser is, “how many years and hours have you practiced your instrument, how many times have you collaborated in improvisation concerts?” These guys also have reservoirs of textural, soloistic “palettes” ready at a moments notice. So it’s not like the composer who has to agonize over choices, as the improviser is able to recall immediately. But I bet the choices from the composer for a majority of time will be more thoughtful and meaningful than musical choices from the improviser.

What’s the role of the “Error” in your musical vision? For “error” I mean an incorrect procedure, an irregularity in the normal operation of a mechanism, a discontinuity on an otherwise uniform surface that can lead to new developments and unexpected surprises …

While doing research during my qualification writing, certain assumptions about music were challenged. I think that writing has helped to clarify many misconceptions on my part. It makes me realize, the more I know, the more it is that I don’t know.

It seems to me that there is a small music scene about classical guitarists dedicated to an innovative and contemporary repertoire, as well as you come to my mind the names of Marco Cappelli, David Tanenbaum, David Starobin, Elena Casoli, Seth Josel, Marc Ribot who played John Zorn music ... shall I speak about a music scene? Are you in contact with these musicians? Are there other guitarists you know and that you can suggest us that they move on these innovative musical routes?

I am not in touch with those you named, though our repertoire has benefited by the collaborative work with these artists. I admire Elena Casoli for her interpretation of works from her husband, composer Maurizio Pisati. In Italy you also have the innovative guitarist Arturo Tallini, whom I met when I performed at the Rome Academy with Harvey Sollberger in 2007. Arturo is now playing duos with the new music guitarist Magnus Andersson. In addition, I was grateful to meet the acquaintance of guitarist/conductor Stefano Cardi at my solo recital at the Rome Academy in 2005. New Music guitarists on the scene that I really admire are: Stefan Österjö, Jürgen Ruck, and Geoffrey Morris. I recently discovered a talented American in Michael Nicollela. My colleague at U.C. San Diego, Pablo Gomez Cano is also exceptional.

Talking about innovative composers, what do you think about John Zorn and the New York musical downtown scene, so ready to get and recode every musical language, improvisation, jazz, contemporary music, cartoon music?

Yeah I performed once a long time ago at Phil Nibblock’s Loft – one of the Mecca’s of the downtown scene long before there was a John Zorn on the scene. I did notice the downtown scene in New York – I played with the group The Bowery Ensemble in Lukas Foss’ Music for Six, which had comical and improvisational elements to it. But as I mentioned above, the improv downtown scene is not for me, and often consists of people with extremely large egos with posing manifestations. It’s more fun to play than to listen.

I had a typical “American” childhood, as my interest at age 11 was rock music and the electric guitar. I learned jazz guitar in high school, and though I started classical guitar after hearing Segovia in concert at age 14, I enjoyed playing in the high school jazz big band. Around this time, a turn toward the serious life’s work on the guitar came after a swimming/diving accident and coming within one millimeter of being paralyzed. Not to mention, at that moment I saw my life pass before my eyes. This enlightened the conviction in my choice to study music. After High School, I attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. But then, it got all blurred as I started to play the Renaissance Lute. I had taken master-classes with Paul O’Dette, which was a great experience. I remember going home one Thanksgiving and bringing on board the bus my lute, classical and jazz guitars. After 3 semesters as one of 700 or so guitar majors, I transferred to the Manhattan School of Music where I received my B.M and M.M. degrees and studying classical guitar with the three-headed guitar faculty there at that time. After living in Europe for 11 years, I returned to the U.S. in 2006 to get my Doctorate. I qualified for candidacy the D.M.A. in Contemporary Performance this past June at the University of California San Diego. The University is reputable as one of the leading institutions in the world for the research of New Music. There I did not study on my instrument with a guitar professor (there is not a guitar performance professor at U.C.S.D.). But rather, I brought my pieces in for lessons to professors who were composers, instrumentalists and conductors. The ideas from these musicians perspective were informative in that musical ideas were not bound by knowledge of the guitar’s technical limitations.

You have worked closely with composers of distinction such as Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Jason Eckardt, David del Tredici, Harvey Sollberger, Pierre Boulez, Roger Reynolds, Tristan Murail, Helmut Lachenmann, Matthias Spahlinger, Phillipe Manoury and Charles Wuorinen and you have also collaborated with esteemed conductors Stefan Asbury, Heinz Holliger, Steven Schick and Jeffrey Milarsky. How was it working with these people?

While performing and recording with Ensemble Sospeso New York, I worked with Elliott Carter. He was a young man then, maybe 91 years old or so! We performed his work, Syringa (1978) for mezzo, bass baritone, guitar and ten instruments and recorded it on the Mode Records label. Jeffrey Milarsky conducted. Mr. Carter had a stately presence as we worked together on the beginning of the work – a noble guitar solo imitating the Greek god Orpheus. George Crumb is a composer who is very friendly and easily approachable, kind of a “down-home” personality. I really enjoyed working together on his percussion/guitar duo Mundus Cantus. Jason Eckardt, and David del Tredici coached me before performances of their works. Helmut Lachenmann devises ways of playing for the guitar and other instruments in creating sounds and affects that follow his musical and textural ethos. So I learned extended techniques from him during rehearsals at U.C. San Diego for his chamber work, Zwei Gefühle. My work with flutist/composer/conductor Harvey Sollberger is an ongoing process, as we we’ll be giving workshops/performances this February at Duke University, U.N.C. Chapel Hill, and at N.C. State University. Harvey is important because of his approach to accuracy, especially in the areas of rhythmic precision and in the dogged adherence to playing what’s in the score. Charles Wuorinen is someone I know from his work as a conductor, as well as from his coaching’s I’ve had on several of his works. I also worked with Pierre Boulez in his Le Marteau sans Maître with Ensemble Sospeso and conductor Stefan Asbury in a birthday-tribute concert at Alice Tully Hall, New York. Percussionist/conductor Steven Schick worked with me in the performance and recording of Boulez’ important work as well. Heinz Holliger conducted myself and members of Ensemble notabu Düsseldorf in Elliott Carter’s – Luimen – a work containing not only the guitar solo Shard, but, some tricky ensemble playing as well. Composer Roger Reynolds is University Professor at the University of California San Diego. We worked together on his solo work, The Behaviour of Mirrors (1985) - a piece that explores the premise that a mirror can not only reflect moments of the present, but moments of the past and of the future as well. The work was recorded and is in my 12 C.D. box set as well as playing on YouTube. I just worked with Tristan Murail this past April on his work, Tellur (1977). To get inspired ideas from one of the founders of Spectralism on the performance of this work was immensely valuable.

You have played Changes by Elliott Carter, would like to talk us about this score and your experience playing it?

Changes (1983) is one of the pivotal works for guitar. As a classical guitar student at Manhattan School of Music, I got to hear Mr. Starobin perform Changes before its premiere. It’s a work that demands rigor and mercurial ways of change in your playing. The transmutation of dynamic and rhythmic contours are occurring all the time. It works well when the player sticks to a tempo, follows for example the sequencing patterns of the 16th – note quintuplets, and, uses very little rubato. Imagine you’re playing “ringing changes,” like the bell ringers there in Europe (and to a lesser extend here in the U.S.) do. So be ready to find the most sonorous and softest elements of your instrument and right hand attack – and then give the most contrasting performances of the textures and dynamics as possible. I like to play the ending like a Bach Chorale, reveling in the most sonorous musical elements.

Berio in his essay "A remembrance to the future," wrote: ".. A pianist who is a specialist about classical and romantic repertoire, and plays Beethoven and Chopin without knowing the music of the twentieth century, is also off as a pianist who is specialist about contemporary music and plays with hands and mind that have never been crossed in depth by Beethoven and Chopin. " You play both traditional classical and contemporary repertoire ... do you recognize yourself in these words?

That reference of Berio while speaking to the students at Harvard University truly resounds in my musical philosophy. The New-Music interpretive experience refreshes the guitarist’s “toolbar” and ready’s one’s performing outside of established interpretive contexts. This is more important wisdom than any guitar teacher helped me with, because all they did was to try to sell me a bag of “interpretive” goods – I am not interested in playing “this way” or like “this player” – I am only interested in playing what’s in the music, not whether I have had conversations with J.S. Bach through my dreams, etc. My model musician is the pianist Maurizio Pollini, because he plays all the styles incredibly well. He is never satisfied, always striving and puts music first. His recording of the second Boulez Piano Sonata is incredible! I have dual major influences in my musical development. On the one hand, there is the New York “Uptown” music tradition – composers Babbitt, Wuorinen, Sollberger – as well as the musicians I worked with while studying and living in New York such as those in “The Group for Contemporary Music”, the “New Music Consort”, “Musician’s Accord”, and other musicians such as percussionist/conductor Clare Heldrich, who have shaped my musical training and background at an early age. And on the other hand, I have a strong classical guitar background through the knowledge from my teachers, intimate listening of recordings of important guitarists such as Segovia, Williams, Bream, Diaz, and my participation in international classical guitar competitions. So my advice for the beginning classical guitarist is to develop the sound, the execution and concentration required for a performance. Then, the ability in playing for example, a Bach Suite with a fugue is important. This is mandatory in order to be prepared for contemporary works, like the quasi suite-form of the Britten Nocturnal, opus 70. Oscar Ghiglia used to teach that a first-year guitarist should learn and perform Bach’s Prelude, Fugue and Allegro BWV 998 – and for good reason! Further, if you learn and edit your own Bach Suite from the Neue Bach Ausgabe, and not an edited guitar version, then one has an idea what it would be like to learn a brand new work composed for the guitar – a clean slate, no fingerings, and - what do you do now?end of first part

First live recording with Julian Bream playing Renaissance repertoire. The original version of this LP included on tha A side only music for lute by William Byrd and John Dowland, while the B side was interested by music by Downland performed with the voice of Peter Pears

Grammy-winning guitarist Earl Klugh will perform solo in tribute to his hero, Chet Atkins, in the closing weeks of the special exhibition Chet Atkins: Certified Guitar Player. Renowned for his sweet tone and his mastery of the acoustic guitar, Klugh ranks as one of the world's finest guitarists. He was barely a teen in Detroit when he was awestruck by seeing Atkins play guitar on television. "Chet's playing cast a long shadow on my whole life," Klugh said of his late friend. After meeting in the late 1970s, Klugh and Atkins collaborated frequently. "Earl can wail with the best," Atkins told Guitar Player magazine, "but he prefers to touch people emotionally. He reaches your heart with that romantic special something." Presented in support of the exhibit Chet Atkins: Certified Guitar Player, made possible by the Gretsch Company.

lunedì 19 ottobre 2015

Hilary Field is a young, very talented and promising, American guitarist. This is not her debut album, already has to her credit several CDs devoted to ballads, lullabies and Spanish and Latin music, but this Premieres is, in a sense, a maturity test. In this work, she decided to play 19 tracks, all of contemporary composers. The names involved are different: Richard Charlton with its Latin Suites, Douglas Lora with Northeastern Lullaby, Jorge Morel Suite for Olga and Echoes Del Sur, with Alberto Cumplido’s Retrato Antiguo dedicated to John Dowland, the Damsel, a fantasy about a sepharditic lullaby by the same Field, Mimose by Victor Kioulaphides, Prelude and Baiser by Nadia Borislova, Berceuse Op. 56 Gerard Drozd and Reluctant Farewell by Rick Sowash.

Now. Records like this are not exactly new: it’s about time that classical guitar gets huge attentions by a large number of new composers and increasingly classical guitar players themselves decline willingly from the traditional role of interpreter to create their own passages, as it’s usual practice for acoustical and electric guitar players. The result is a hypertrophy of songs and musical productions, often interesting, well comped and well played. Maybe not all there new scores are exactly innovative, often, as in this case, most of them put their attentions on expression, color, melody and feeling more then looking for new harmonic structures or distinct rhythms.

From this point of view Premieres is not an avangard record. Which doesn’t mean that this is not a good record, or that the music is not interesting or that Hilary Field is not a good interpreter. Surely, I think, this is a much more sentimental, well played and very "hybrid" cd.

I use the term "hybridization" because I think it is the best way to define this music and because I find that terms like "crossover" and "globalization" have already made their time. Otherwise I can’t explain how an Australian composer (Richard Charlton) can compose a Latin Suite dedicated to Antonio Lauro. Or a Chilean composer (Alberto Cumplido) dedicate his work to John Dowland.

So I think we are living in times where we could not wonder no more about how a Japanese musician could play so well Western classical music or how a white guitar player could play a blues. Maybe because of globalization or the rapid deployment and generosity made possible by the Internet, but now we can’t longer hide ourselves anymore: music, such as information, has become liquid and every musical language, whether niche or belonging to a particular ethnic group, can be listened to, analyzed and integrated into other different languages without having to bother into particular literature, record or ethnological field searches. Every musician, every performer, every composer, in short everyone can or wants to make music has at its disposal the Babel’s Library described by Borges with just a few clicks. I think this is good thing, then time and our choices will define what to keep and what to leave in this huge incredible musical offer. Meanwhile, thank you very much Hilary, this is a good record.

sabato 17 ottobre 2015

Rhys Chatham composed "Guitar Trio Is My Life" in 1977, a New York’s propagation across a single guitar string that blends the "unstratified" minimalism by Tony Conrad and the guitar army which was already working in those years Glenn Branca also. Thirty years after the Radium, section of the Table of Elements, published a 3-CD box set titled Guitar Trio Is My Life, which contains the same composition played several times (with change of speed or vehemence) by members of a patchwork of groups, from Sonic Youth to Tortoise, from Hüsker Dü to Silver Mt Zion. Exaggeration? You can bet, but a wonderful exaggeration: Guitar Trio is an invention of an indefinite, infinite growing, that seems to anticipate beyond every chord a change that never happens or that happens without a coup d'Etat.The three CDs box set contain the repetition of the same no wave style mantra guitar, deleting the bitter cynicism of that genre in the maximalist, epic, and enthusiastic suspension. And then yes, we shall and must say that this composition also contributed significantly to create an aesthetic form of which many were children, by the already referred Sonic Youth to Godspeed You Black Emperor!, but we deliberately say it only at the end, distracted and without stopping too much mesmerized by the music that does not change and by the size of this work. Three CDs are indeed many and I would recommend this challenging purchase only for the fans of Chatham, also for the beautiful booklet with unpublished photos accompanying the casket.

October 14, 2015: Music for Voice and Guitar (Julian Bream & Peter Pears)

This is the first recording of Bream with the tenor Peter Pears for RCA. These two gentlemen had worked, played and recorded together before in the late '50s for the label Westminster. On this record we find them struggling with the contemporary repertoire of music composed by Britten, Walton, Seiber and Racine Fricker.

sabato 10 ottobre 2015

"Road Games" is a record with a troubled and complicated history. We are in 1983, jazz rock and the fusion conquer a lot of people and the "guitar heroes" records sell and sell very well. Musical reviewer and guitar’s lovers from a long time have found a new guitar prodigy, incensed by the criticism and by the colleagues but ignored by the great public. Maybe the time has come for Allan Holdsworth to make the great jump and to receive the honors and the satisfactions that his skills and abilities have been asking for different years.

It seems this is the right time: the Warrer Bros is interested to Holdsworth and proposes him a contract for an album with the production of Ted Templeman. Everything seems to be all right, Allan starts with Paul Williams to write all the songs, when here come the troubles: Templeman intends to make a solo album for Allan Holdsworth, a record full of guests and he is not interested to produce him with his group I.O.U. and the voice of Paul Williams. The same Van Halen would want to play with Allan: from him he gets however a refusal, which makes the "flying ducth" not so happy. Justly Holdsworth, being the true artist he really is, knows that the public would buy the album only for the presence of these guests, and not because the I.O.U. project. So Templeman refuses to continue, he becomes impossible to find him with his pupil Van Halen, leaving Allan with half of the songs recorded and without a recording studio to finish the job. Finally, after thousand difficulty and delays, difficult mixes, and above all a contract with the W. Bros (what it imposes to Allan to pay the rest of the recording costs), Road Games goes out, with Chad Wakerman (ex F. Zappa) to the drums, Jeff Berlin to the bass (old friend from the B. Bruford band), and the vocals by Paul Williams and Jack Bruce. Every track is a small guitar masterpiece: "Tokyo Dream" introduces to an unusual rhythmic structure and a great search in sounds and in chords, with Allan using the hammering technique finalized to the search of unusual harmonic solutions. This song, with which Holdsworth opens his concerts is a paradise for all the lovers of the finger tapping, the technique to two hands on the keyboard. In "Water On The Brain" Jeff Berlin shows all his ability in a solo simply defined historical. All the long playing, even if in a mini LP version, is very beautiful, and it gives to Allan the nomination (!!!) for the "Grammy Award", the more aspired prize for every musicians, equivalent to an Oscar .. Everything fine? Happy ending? No. No because is not so easy to get this mini Ep and it often costs some euros, but I assure you that it's well worth the effort, is a great record and Allan Holdswoth is a great guitarist!

Rodrigo, Britten, Vivaldi was released in May 1964, this record is the result of several musical encounters. Bream met Melos Chamber Orchestra with conductor Colin Davis recording with producer James Burnett the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo. With the Julian Bream Consort instead he recorded The Courtly Dances from Gloriana by Benjamin Britten and the Concert for Lute and Strings in D major RV93 by Antonio Vivaldi.

sabato 3 ottobre 2015

Another very interesting thing was the unscrupulous use by Stalling of copyright: this ingenious composer in the'30s was making nothing more or less what we today would call a collage of remixes of songs of others, anticipating the work of Zorn, Zappa and John Oswald and the ideas of Gilles Deleuze. Stalling was making “quoting” operations similar to those made in the same period by Igor Strawinskij and Charles Ives, and especially writing songs adapting short pieces of other works finalizing them to comment cartoons with fast rhythms. According to Daniel Goldmark his work was more a patchwork then a real composition and his perfectionism on his music, which direct result was the invention of the "click" of which we have already spoken, is justified in large part by the needs to work with scripts written by others and created for an animation cinema with very close times to be observed scrupulously.

In addition to his famous prelude with the sound "boinngs"! (played by a string of electric guitar) Stalling is the author of " Mennely We Roll Plong" and "The Merry Go Round Broke Down ", now familiar themes for the series "Merri Melodies" and "Lovely Tunes" respectively. Each cartoon took about 3 hours for recording it the orchestra using the Warner studio orchestra composed by 50 elements. According to the director Bob Clampett, the musicians inevitably become much more skilled and active working with Stalling, who was especially fond of composer Raymond Scott. "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals" by Scott appears here in "Gorelb My Dreams", while you can track its mechanistic "Powerlouse" in "Mice Meriz cat." The use of Stalling of classic themes it was also very creative. A particularly exciting encounter between music and video was the "Fingall's Cove" by Mendelssohns with the Minah Bird singing "Jaki" by Chuck Jones that you can listen to in "Caveman Inki".

Other works to remember are "How dry Fans," "Am I blue", "the Lady in Red" from Warner Music Fim "In Caliente".

Carl Stalling gave to this type of composition its highest moments and his best music. When Stalling retired in 1958 the Golden Age of american animation was about to reach its hightest moment. “Today, the trouble with the cartoons, " hesaid 5 years before he died," is that they have more talking so the music actually has less importance. " Fanz Flelang the director certifies that only very occasionally there was a simple "give and take": Stalling usually asked to extend the scene to enable him to complete the music, as Stalling told to Mike Barrier and Milton Eray in their last interview on Funnyworld, "Me and the directors of cartons were working on the same material and I was recording without looking at the scene. When the scene was just finished the music was ready."

Perhaps one of the secrets of Stalling is his functionalism. Freley said: "Carl put great emphasis on the man who had to write for." Chuck Jones recalls that Stalling never tried to appear witty and intelligent, so his music was never the ornament, but integrated”. Chuck Jones said that "For Carl, the music and love was all one." Its’ impossible to calculate its influence on posterity, though his name has become more popular only in recent times. The most interesting tributes are: "Suspended Animation" by Fantomas Mike Patton and the double cd "Cartoon S & M" by John Zorn.
Warner Bros made two fantastic anthologies of his music for cartoons:

giovedì 1 ottobre 2015

Claudio Pagelli combines the beauty and aesthetics of the greatest Italian Designers with the legendary precision of Swiss watches. If there is any luthier in guitar history which might compare it might be Antonio "Wandre" Pioli. Pagelli is the master of one-offs. His feel for form and function is unsurpassed. His acoustic, electric and archtop guitar designs have made him an interesting source and consultant for major international guitar companies.